Plans for a state-run boarding school at the centre of a Conservative race row
face a Whitehall investigation after an intervention from a Labour MP.

The National Audit Office has been considering the case of Durand Academy in inner London, which wants to open a boarding unit in West Sussex. The auditors could publish criticism of the plan within days.

The plan to have children from the Stockwell area taught at a boarding school in Sussex has met strong resistance from local residents, including Conservative activists. The Durand plan is strongly supported by Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, who has pushed for schools to take academy status and the autonomy it brings.

One Sussex Conservative councillor has resigned from the party and apologised after making comments suggesting the fact that many of the school’s pupils are not white was part of the local community’s objection to the plan.

John Cherry was facing party discipline after being reported as saying that pupils of Pakistani origin do not work hard and suggesting that London children would “escape” from the boarding school, leading to a “sexual volcano”.

Durand Academy owns St Cuthman’s, a former boarding school, in Stedman, West Sussex, and applied for permission to develop it and use it as a boarding unit for its pupils. Buying the school building and land cost Durand more than £3 million, and the development would be more costly still.

As an academy, Durand runs on public money but is independent of its local council. Sussex residents objecting to the plan have challenged its spending on the boarding project, and asked Margaret Hodge, the Labour chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, to investigate.

Mrs Hodge this year referred the case to the National Audit Office, the Whitehall spending watchdog. The NAO confirmed that its conclusions will be handed to Mrs Hodge and her committee this week. The auditors have previously expressed reservations about the management of academy schools, suggesting that there is inadequate control of their spending to ensure value for public money.

Criticism of the Durand project from the NAO would escalate tensions between Mrs Hodge and Mr Gove over the Public Accounts Committee’s scrutiny of education policies.

Last year, Mr Gove accused Mrs Hodge of using her position as head of the all-party committee to hold up his programme of school reform, describing her committee and the NAO as “some of our fiercest forces of conservatism”.

Mrs Hodge has insisted that she is simply doing her job, promising to “continue to hold the Government to account on taxpayers’ behalf”.

Mr Gove today told MPs that he supports the boarding school plan, which is also backed by Kate Hoey, the Labour MP whose Vauxhall seat includes the Durand Academy.

The Department for Education backed the Durand plan and criticised those who want to “obstruct” it.